Talk Geeky To Me

Anodyne is described on steam as an Action, Adventure Indie game and is being compared to the 2D Zelda titles. I’m not 100% confident in comparing the two considering to my knowledge (I may be wrong) the last 2D Zelda game is 20 years old this year.

The aim of Anodyne is to protect ‘The Briar’ from some kind of evil entity. You grab your sword (broom) and head into the nearest dungeon under the advice of a ‘Sage’ in order to prepare yourself to fight ‘The Darkness’. I only played the first dungeon but so far it plays very much like your average 90’s dungeon crawler. Kill monsters, hit switchers, figure out puzzles. Not un-enjoyable but also not breaking the mold.

The game makes fun of itself and the game genre through interactions with NPCs. One particular conversation that springs to mind is an NPC telling you that a man sold him a mirror and he thought there was a camera behind it so he sprayed it with soapy water, I like a little bit of random in my game so I found these kind of interactions enjoyable.

The game has an achievement for completing it 100% within 3 hours so it isn’t by any stretch of the imagination the longest game ever created however at it’s current price point I have no issues with it being that short.

I personally don’t really have any appreciation for the 2D dungeon crawler, it’s just not a genre that I had much fun with as a kid (Maybe I was a stupid kid who knows) and I went into Anodyne expecting to dislike it. But this was not the case, even when I was dying due to plain stupidity (Maybe I’m a stupid adult, who knows?) I was keen to hit that continue button and show that mob/puzzle who was boss.

The game is currently $6.69 on Steam and will be back to $9.99 after the 30th of March.

In answer to the question, Yes I would play Anodyne.

If you want to see some gameplay for yourself feel free to check out http://youtu.be/IbHWS1zAJxk for the first 20 minutes of my experience.

Monster Loves You! is described on steam as an Adventure, RPG, Indie, Casual Simulation game. If you don’t know exactly what that means don’t feel too bad neither did I. Apparently it means a point and click game, and not your typical point and click game, a point and click game that has you choose one of two - four options that comes up on the screen.

The aim of the game is to choose the options that maximize your monster’s core statistics: Bravery, Cleverness, Ferocity, Honesty, Kindness and Respect. Without enough of these when you hit the time limit your monster will dissolve and you will be forced to create another monster. If you do have enough stats you get to become an elder, as I was unable to do this on my play through I’m not sure what game play options are available after that.

The game really banks on it’s charm to carry it as there is no real game play and while I did find some of the dialogue and ‘quest’ descriptions cute and humorous I had began to tire of them by the end of my play through and honestly the thought of playing it again fills me with very little joy at this time.

Being that a play through takes about 40 minutes it is possible that I missed the actual game part of this game and that everything becomes amazing when you manage to successfully create an ‘elder monster’ but somehow I doubt it.

I think for me I would enjoy a game like this a lot more if I was actually able to see my Monster. The first 10-15 minutes of the game are based around your monster growing from a baby monster to an adolescent monster and it seems like this would be a great place to have your monster’s image built based around which stats you end this stage with. If there is a way to view your monster and the game actually does this I apologize. But then again I clicked everything that looked clickable on the screen (not much) and was unable to find it.

The game is currently $8.99 on Steam and will be back to $9.99 after the 26th of March.

In answer to the question, No I would not play Monster Loves You!

If you want to see some ‘Game play’ for yourself feel free to check out http://youtu.be/2WSm2WvT8XI for the first 20 minutes of my experience.